Daily Bible Study Tips –

Miscellaneous Comments on the Prophets


Introduction, Jeremiah 1:4-10
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Jeremiah 26:8-16
Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Jeremiah 32:1-3, 5-15
Lamentations 1:1-6
Hosea 1:1-10
Hosea 11:1-11
Amos 7:7-17
Amos 8:1-12
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Habbakuk 1:1-4
Habakkuk 2:9-20, Stones will cry out against injustice
Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Zechariah 9:9-11, Psalms 118:19-27, Songs of Entry

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 The prophet rebuketh Ahab. Click to enlarge.
"The Prophet Rebuketh Ahab" from the Binns family Bible,
now in the private collection of Regina L. Hunter.


Jeremiah 1:4-10

Being called by God to be a prophet is awe-inspiring, humbling, more than a little frightening, and often dangerous:
In similar circumstances, all we can do is say, with Isaiah, “Here am I. Send me.” God’s assurance is that he will go with us, protect us, and tell us what to say.


Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Jeremiah is sometimes called the "weeping prophet."  My main tip is this:  Never read Jeremiah or Lamentations on an overcast day.  Jeremiah preached before and during the Exile of Judah in Babylon.  God was very angry and disappointed about Judah's continued worship of other gods, and finally God had had enough.  Most prophets give a fairly simple message:  continue in your current wicked ways and die, or repent and live.  Jeremiah is the only prophet I know of who is not at all sure that God will take the children of Israel back.  Their sins were so many and so pervasive that Jeremiah did not promise them that they could repent and live.


Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Both my parents smoked.  They complained about the cost, the bad taste, the yellow teeth, and the difficulty of quitting.  My sister and I made the same decision:  not to start.  We were able to learn from the previous generation's experience.  God punished the northern kingdom, Israel, for its continued sins by sending the people into exile in 722 BC.  More than a hundred years passed, and Israel was never restored.  Did the southern kingdom, Judah, learn from Israel's experience?  Unfortunately, no, and now we are down to the last days of the kingdom of Judah.  The prophet Jeremiah and the poet Asaph can see that exile is looming because it is too late for repentance.  Now they are asking, "How long, O Jehovah? Will You be angry forever?"  For the moment, there is no answer. See also Psalms 79:1-9


Jeremiah 26:8-16 (10/6/11)

Performers and politicians call an unresponsive or hostile audience a “tough house.” Prophets virtually always play to a tough house, for two reasons.

First, when we as a community of faith are being responsive and welcoming toward God, God doesn’t send us a prophet. Only when we are unresponsive and hostile does God send us prophets. Second, when a prophet does come to us, it is with the bad news that God is unhappy about our behavior. We don’t want to hear it. Prophecy is a difficult and dangerous job, because most people won’t listen, and the ones that do often want to kill the prophet.


Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

The Jews of the kingdom of Judah have been defeated and deported, and now they are in Babylon.  As near as they can tell, they will be there for 400 years, the same amount of time that they were in Egypt.  Jeremiah gives them the message that God wants them to make the best of the situation, and in particular that he wants them to pray for Babylon and seek peace for it.  Remember every day to pray for your enemies and seek peace for them.  Tough message for the Jews; tough message for us. 


Jeremiah 32:1-3, 5-15

Many of the prophetic books tell us exactly when and to whom the prophecy was delivered.  Jeremiah is particularly good about this, because he even tells us when various parts of the book were delivered, e.g., "the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.  It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month" (Jer. 1:2-3).  Other books are less specific, merely saying that the prophecy came during the reigns of certain kings.  Still others give little or no explicit indication of when they were delivered.  Since 1 and 2 Kings are separated by several books of writings from the prophetic books, and since the prophets are not arranged in chronological order, it can be a little tricky to follow who is saying what to whom.  Jeremiah prophesied to the kings of Judah shortly before and during the Babylonian exile.  Note that Zedekiah wasn't interested; he had Jeremiah locked up.


Jeremiah 33:14-16

When most of us think about the prophets, what springs to mind are the prophecies about the coming of Jesus, which are called "Messianic prophecies."  We typically read this type of prophecy during Advent, which begins next Sunday.  Messianic prophecy has several threads running through it.  We see some of these in today's readings:

Lamentations 1:1-6

Here's my main tip.  If you are feeling sad, don't read today's scripture.
 
We are reading two laments for Jerusalem and Judah, both written during the exile of the Jews in Babylon.  Jerusalem was razed and burned and her walls torn down.  The Temple was looted.  The people were taken into exile, and the countryside was left without anyone to take care of it.  And the worst thing of all was this:  the Jews realized that they deserved it all!  God deserted them long after they had deserted God.
 
Code words:  "She" is sometimes Jerusalem and sometimes Judah, personified as a woman.  The "lovers" and "friends" are the nations with whom Judah made alliances rather than trust in God.  Zion is the mountain on which Jerusalem is built, and thus also stands for Jerusalem. See also Psalms 137.


Hosea 1:1-10

The metaphor of an adulterous woman to represent the people of Israel when they had turned away from God was a familiar one.  When the prophet Hosea married an adulterous woman, people knew exactly what he was saying to them.  Then he named his first son Jezreel, as a reminder of the bloodbath that Jehu had wrought upon the house of Ahab in the Valley of Jezreel.  His daughter's name, Lo-Ruhamah, means "Not Pitied."  His third child, a son, was named Lo-Ammi, "Not My People."  The children's names were warnings of what would happen if the nation did not repent.  The truly amazing thing is that when Gomer went off to pursue her adulterous pastimes and fell into slavery, Hosea bought her back!  God punishes his people when they deserve it, but he is always willing to buy us back if we repent. 


Hosea 11:1-11

Hosea preached while Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were the kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.  Assyria threatened Israel and forced them to pay tribute money to keep the peace.  Ahaz, king of Judah, made an alliance with Assyria against Syria and Israel.  Unfortunately it just meant that Judah also became a vassal of Assyria.  Both Judah and Israel tried to ally with Egypt (at different times), but both times ended in political disaster for the Jews when the Egyptians were defeated and the Jews deported.  How ironic that the children of Israel made alliances with their former master, Egypt!  How sad that they trusted in politics rather than God!  Paul was devastated that his own people, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the people of God, continued to refuse to accept God's plan for them. See also Romans 9:1-5.


Amos 7:7-17

After the death of David's son Solomon, Israel and Judah broke apart into two kingdoms.  Remember how David brought the Ark to Jerusalem, which meant that all adult men had to show up there a few times a year?  The first king of Israel, Jeroboam,  figured that his kingdom wouldn't last long if his people were going down to Jerusalem to worship, so he set up shrines at Dan, in the north of Israel, and Bethel, in the south.  Each shrine contained a golden calf.  This made it "convenient" for people to worship without going all the way to Jerusalem.  The kings of Israel did quite a number of evil deeds, but the writers of 1 and 2 Kings gave them the worst marks for "continuing in the sin of Jeroboam," that is, maintaining the apostate shrines at Dan and Bethel.


Amos 8:1-12

My daughter has been reading a novel by a Christian writer, and in it a character who used to be very devout has turned into a person who really is a bit poisonous.  Another character quotes a Bible verse to show that the first character has lost her salvation.  My daughter recognized the verse and looked it up to confirm that it was originally directed at a church, not an individual.  She wanted to know what I thought of the practice of applying verses in this way.  In general, the practice is a bad one.  God has plans and strategies for the salvation of the universe.  Individuals need salvation; nations, as well as individuals, may or may not participate in the strategy. 

A message meant for a nation might make sense when it is applied to a person, but the burden of proof is on the person using scripture in this way.   For example, the LORD tells the Kingdom of Israel through Amos, "This is the end for my people Israel. I won't forgive them again. ... You [Israel] will go all over the earth, seeking a message from me, the LORD. But you won't find one."  The nation has been cut off from God for its behavior.  But many, many other scriptures tell us that God always answers the earnest prayers of individuals who seek him and will forgive all who truly repent.  I am unaware of any scripture that says God will not answer the prayers of people who belong to him – the petition may be denied or the response delayed, but eventually there will be an answer.  So it would be incorrect to apply these verses that were meant for the Kingdom of Israel to an individual.


Jonah 3:1-5, 10

The point of Jonah is not that God can make a great fish, nor even that God can save me from the belly of a great fish.  These things are not in dispute.  The point of Jonah is that God is merciful and loving to those who repent, even to those whom I personally would rather not see receiving God's mercy or love.


Habbakuk 1:1-4

The prophet Habbakuk asks God, "Why do you allow violence, lawlessness, crime, and cruelty to spread everywhere?"  The answer seems to be that unless you are free to sin, your restraint from sin is meaningless.  What I notice is that we only ask this question when we are the current victims of other people's sins or when we have gotten caught for our own sins.  While we are in the process of committing sin we just take it for granted that we can do this.


Habakkuk 2:9-20, Stones will cry out against injustice (3/31/09)

Long after the time of David, the people of Israel had fallen away from God. God had sent them numerous prophets, but they didn't listen. Their idolatry, their social injustice, and their apostasy grew worse until God's only option was to punish them. God called on a foreign nation, Babylon, to invade Judah and execute judgment on his people. The prophet Habakkuk delivered the word of the LORD: if the people of Israel refused to acknowledge their sin and repent, the stones in the walls would testify against them. In contrast, idols made of stone are silent, even when called upon for speech.


Haggai 1:15b-2:9

When the Jews returned from the Babylonian exile, Jerusalem was in ruins.  The walls were down, and the Temple had been robbed and razed.  The prophets Haggai and Zechariah led the effort to rebuild the Temple.  Note that Zerubbabel is a descendant of David in the royal line and the 9th-great-grandfather of Jesus (Matthew 1:13-16).


Zechariah 9:9-11, Psalms 118:19-27, Songs of Entry (4/1/09)

As we saw Monday, King David was content to be humble and undignified before the Lord. He always relied on God to guide his political decisions. Later kings relied on armies, which were inadequate to protect them. The kings and the nation fell into idolatry and apostasy, and the nation was punished by being exiled to Babylon. Much of Jerusalem, including the Temple and the walls of the city, was razed. After the Jews returned from Babylon and the rebuilt the Temple, the prophet Zechariah foretold that a new King would come, a righteous king who had no need of either dignity or armies.

Our psalm is similar in spirit. A humble stone, rejected by the builder, becomes the cornerstone of the building. "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"


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Opinions expressed on this page are solely those of the author, Regina Hunter, and may or may not be shared by the sponsors or the Bible-study participants.  Thanks to the Holy Spirit for any useful ideas presented here, and thanks to all the readers for their support and enthusiasm.  All errors are, of course, the sole responsibility of the author.

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